Somebody was trying to break his ribs.
They pushed down on his chest, hard, three times. Something came up his throat that tasted of mud and cold pennies. He rolled onto his side and threw up what felt like half a river, then lay there coughing until his eyes ran.
"Good," said a voice above him. "Keep going. Get it all out."
He got it all out. It took a while.
When he could see again, he saw grass. It was flattened and muddy, close to his face. Past it ran a fast brown river, loud and full of sticks and foam. A little way upstream, a bridge crossed it.
Okay, he thought. Okay. What.
He was freezing. His shirt was stuck to him, and so were his trousers. His feet were bare and white, and so cold they felt like somebody else's.
He was fairly sure they were somebody else's. His feet had never been that big. Neither had the rest of him. He had been the short, skinny kid in the school photos, and then the short, skinny man in a gaming chair.
"Fallow." A hand gripped his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. "Look at me. Fallow."
He looked.
A young woman was kneeling over him and dripping on him. She was about nineteen, and soaked to the skin, as if she'd been in the river too. Which, he worked out slowly, she had. She was tall, with long arms and heavy shoulders, built by rowing boats or hauling nets. Her skin was dark brown. Her black hair was cut short at the jaw and stuck flat to her head. She wore a wool shirt and leather trousers, both black with water, and no boots. Her eyes were dark and steady. She looked as if she was deciding whether to push on his chest again. A thin white scar ran across the back of her left hand, the one gripping his shoulder.
He had never seen her before.
"Hi," he croaked. "Who's Fallow?"
She frowned. "You are."
"Right. Sure. Cool."
For six years, whenever anything went wrong, he checked his hitpoints first. He did it now without meaning to. He thought, How bad is this?
And the answer was just there, hanging in the corner of his sight, small and red, like a sticker on a window.
Hitpoints: 1/10.
He stared at it. It didn't go away.
"One," he whispered. "One hitpoint. That's fine. That's a normal amount of hitpoints."
"What?"
"Nothing. Sorry. Give me a second."
He knew those words. He knew that red number. Hitpoints were how much damage you could take before you died. He'd watched that number for most of his life, on a screen, in a game.
The last thing he remembered was a road.
It had been late, after a stream: eight hours of playing live while strangers watched and typed in the chat. Eight hours, as usual. The fridge had been empty and the takeaway downstairs had shut, so he'd gone out for chips. He'd been reading chat on his phone as he crossed. Chat had been arguing about whether he'd survive a boss fight the next day. He remembered laughing at something somebody typed. He remembered headlights, white and close.
Then nothing. Then a river.
His name was Owen. He was twenty-four. And he was, he was almost sure, dead.
He turned his head away from the woman, because it was easier than thinking about that, and he saw the castle.
It stood on the far bank. It was grey stone, with tall towers and a wall around it. He knew it at once. He had seen it more times than he could count. It was Lumbridge Castle, from Old School RuneScape.
The game. He had played it since he was a kid. For the last six years he'd played it for a living, in front of a few thousand strangers a night. And for most players, every time a character died in that game, it woke up again here, in Lumbridge, in front of that castle.
No, he thought. No way. That's a game mechanic. That's not a place you go.
But this Lumbridge was wrong. In the game, Lumbridge had been a castle, a church, a shop, a few houses and a lot of grass. You could walk across it in two minutes. This Lumbridge didn't stop. Roofs ran along the far bank as far as he could see, timber and thatch, hundreds of them. Smoke rose from the chimneys. There were boats tied up at wooden piers. A mill wheel turned in the current. There were people, lots of people, and some of them were standing on the bridge, looking down at him.
"That's Lumbridge," he said.
"Yes," said the young woman slowly. "Fallow, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Three. Why does Lumbridge have suburbs?"
She looked at him. Then she looked up the bank past him and shouted, "Here! He's awake!"
Three people were coming down the riverbank toward them. Two were running. The third was more of a stampede.
The stampede was a big man in his fifties, wide and heavy, with a sunburnt face and a grey beard. His heavy coat flapped open as he ran, and his boots threw up mud. He had a voice like a cart going over a bridge.
"TAM!"
Behind him came a girl of about sixteen, small and quick, with a round freckled face and her brown hair in two plaits. One of them was coming undone. Her white apron was stained with milk.
Ahead of both of them, somehow, was a skinny boy of about ten, all elbows and knees. His fair hair stuck straight up. He had a scab on one knee, a gap where a front tooth should be, and he was soaked to the chest. He threw himself onto the grass and grabbed Owen's arm with both hands.
"Tam. Tam. Tam, look. You're awake. Tam, look at me."
Tam. So that was who he was now. Tam Fallow.
He looked at the big farmer, who had stopped beside them, breathing hard. In the game, you could examine any character and read a one-line description of them. This man's description had said: A large, well built farmer.
It had undersold him.
Seth Groats, he thought. Had to be. The farmer from the game. And that's... He looked at the girl with the plaits. Gillie Groats. The milkmaid. In the game, Gillie taught you how to milk a cow. If you turned up without a bucket, she laughed at you.
The boy was a stranger. So was the young woman. The game had never shown either of them.
"It was my fault," the boy said. The words came out in a flood. "The lamb was in the reeds and I went out on the willow roots and they were slippy and I fell in and you came in after me and you pushed me up onto the roots, Tam, you pushed me up, and then you went under and you didn't come up, you didn't come up..."
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"Jory," said the girl. "Let him breathe."
"The lamb's fine," the boy said, as if that were the most important part. Then he burst into tears.
So that was what had happened, as far as he could tell. A kid called Jory had fallen into a flooded river, and Tam Fallow had gone in after him without stopping to think. Tam had saved him. And Tam had drowned.
And now somebody else was lying here in Tam's wet clothes, with Tam's big cold feet, being thanked for it.
He didn't know what to say. So for once, he said nothing.
"Look at him, he's blue." Seth Groats pulled off his own heavy coat and swung it around Tam's shoulders. "There. Get that around you."
The coat slid off Tam's shoulders and landed in the mud.
At the same moment, words appeared in front of him. They hung in the air between him and the river, bold, in the plain chat font he knew better than his own handwriting.
Stands Alone is an Ironman. He stands alone.
Tam stared at them.
Ironman. In the game, an ironman couldn't trade with anybody, and whatever he owned, he had to earn himself. He had known that for years.
Stands Alone. That was his name. His old name. The username on his account, the one in the top hundred, the one chat typed a thousand times a night. Nobody here could know it. And Seth didn't seem to see the words at all. He was looking straight through them at the coat.
Seth frowned, picked it up and put it back. He tucked the collar in for good measure.
The coat slid off again, slowly, and dropped in a heap behind him. The same words came up again, in the same place.
"He's shaking too hard," said Seth. "Gillie, hold it on him."
Gillie knelt and held the coat around him with both hands. It stayed while she held it. The moment she let go, it slid down his back and off.
Gillie looked at the coat.
"It's wet," Tam said. "The grass. Slippery." It was the worst excuse he had made, and he had once told chat his cat had logged him out.
Jory wiped his face on his sleeve and pulled something out of his belt.
It was a sword. A wooden one, about as long as Tam's arm, carved from a single pale branch. It had a proper crosspiece and a handle wrapped in string. Somebody had cut the letters TAM into the blade, deep and careful and a bit wonky.
"I made it for you," said Jory. "I've had it in my belt for days, waiting. For when you go to Varrock. To be an adventurer. I was going to give it to you at midsummer, but here. Take it now. Take it."
Tam took it.
It went into his hand, and then it went straight through his hand, as if his fingers were smoke. It thumped onto the grass between them, and the old message came up again.
Jory picked it up and held it out again, harder this time.
Tam closed his fingers around the handle. He held on with everything he had. He felt the string and the smooth wood. Then his grip simply wasn't there any more, and the sword dropped past his knee into the mud.
The river roared on beside them.
Oh, come on.
He had loved that message, back when strangers saw it every time they tried to trade with him. Chat used to spam it.
Now the game was saying it to him. It was a lot less funny with a wooden sword in the mud and a ten-year-old's face falling to pieces.
"His hands are frozen," the young woman said. "He can't feel them. He can't hold anything yet."
"Course he can't," said Seth, too loudly. "He was under that water long enough to..." He stopped. He cleared his throat. "Long enough. It'll pass. Jory, keep the sword for him. He'll want it."
Jory looked at the sword, and then at Tam's hands. He didn't put it away. He held it against his chest instead.
Seth turned to the young woman. His big voice went quieter. "Wren. Osric's girl. You went in after him."
"At the bridge," said Wren. "I was running along the bank. I saw him go past."
"I owe you, lass. I owe you more than I can..."
"You don't, Mr Groats." She stood up, gathered her short hair in one fist and wrung the river out of it. Then she looked down at Tam. "Fallow."
"Yes?"
"Don't make me do that again."
She turned and ran back upstream along the bank, barefoot, fast and even. She didn't look back. He watched her until she was gone among the people on the bridge.
Wren, he thought. She knows me. Well. She knows him.
"Up you come," said Seth.
He didn't ask. He got one thick arm under Tam's arms and hauled him to his feet easily. Tam's legs were full of wet sand, but Seth just took the weight. Tam didn't slip out of his grip. Being held up, it seemed, was allowed. Gillie carried the coat. Jory carried the wooden sword.
They walked north along the east bank, back the way the river had brought him. They passed the end of the bridge, where the people who had been watching found other things to look at.
Every few steps he checked the number in the corner of his eye. It was a bad habit, and he didn't care. He wanted to see what it would do.
Hitpoints: 3/10.
The coughing eased. The shaking slowed. By the time they had gone a few hundred steps, he could almost walk on his own. In the game, your hitpoints came back by themselves, about one a minute. Apparently that worked here too, though nobody had told him it would feel like pins and needles coming back into a numb foot.
"You've got your colour back," said Gillie, walking beside him. She was looking at him closely. "That's quick."
"I'm a quick healer."
"Since when?"
"Since about five minutes ago."
She gave a startled little giggle and then looked guilty about it. He decided he liked her.
The path ran along the top of the bank, with the river on their left and rough fields on their right. After a while they passed a house.
It had been a nice house once, he thought. Now it was a ruin. Its walls were scorched black, part of the roof had fallen in, and most of the windows were broken. The trees around it were dead and grey. Smoke rose from somewhere inside. It smelled of roasting meat.
A face appeared at one of the broken windows. It was small, green and ugly, with a flat nose, yellow eyes and teeth like a broken fence. It looked at them. Then it stuck out a long grey tongue and blew a raspberry at them.
"Thieving little beggars," Seth growled. "That's Lozar's house. Goblins burnt her out a few weeks back. Killed the poor old woman and moved right in. Had two of my hens out of the coop last week, cheeky as you like."
Tam stared at the goblin.
There were roughly three things every player knew about the goblins around Lumbridge. Level 2. Five hitpoints. Hit like a wet sock. In the game they were nearly the first thing you killed. You did it with a bronze sword, in your first ten minutes, without looking.
The goblin picked its nose and flicked something at them.
Tam looked at the number in the corner of his eye.
Hitpoints: 5/10.
He had five hitpoints, no sword, no armour and no shoes. He could barely stand without help. It occurred to him that a wet sock could kill him.
He kept walking, and he didn't look back.
The Groats' farm, when they reached it, was much bigger than the one in the game. A great field of cows sloped down toward the river, dotted with brown and white backs. There was a farmhouse of grey stone with a mossy roof, a long barn, a chicken coop and a potato field. A water wheel turned slowly in the current. At the bottom of the cow field, a willow tree leaned out over the water. Its long roots ran down into the river like fingers.
Jory looked at the willow and then looked away fast.
"Daisy's been bawling all morning," said Gillie. "She knew something was wrong. Cows always know."
"Daisy," said Tam.
"Your cow." She gave him a look. "Well. A cow. The one you milk."
"Right. Daisy. My cow." He had no idea which one was Daisy.
Seth took him past the farmhouse to a low stone building with a wooden loft built over it. The ground floor smelled of milk and cold stone. That would be the dairy. A ladder ran up to the loft, and Seth more or less carried him up it.
The loft was long and low, under a sloping roof, with a row of straw beds along one side. It smelled of hay and wool and other people's socks. The farm hands must sleep up here, he thought, and Tam with them. Seth put him down on one of the beds, the one under the little window. Gillie pulled the blankets up over him.
The blankets stayed.
He noticed that, and filed it away with the rest. Coat: slides off. Sword: falls through. Seth's arm: fine. Blankets: fine. He didn't know the pattern yet. He guessed there was one. Games had them.
"Sleep," said Seth. "That's an order."
"I'm fine. Honestly. Look, I've got my colour back."
"Sleep, lad, or I'll sit on you." Seth stood for a moment at the top of the ladder with his big hands hanging at his sides. He didn't seem to know what to do with them. "You gave us a fright," he said at last, gruffly. "Don't do it again."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Then listen." He went down the ladder.
Gillie followed him. Jory stayed. He stood at the end of the bed, holding the wooden sword against his chest. He said nothing, which Tam suspected was a first.
Then he laid the sword carefully on the floor beside the bed, where Tam could see it.
"I'll leave it here," he said. "For when your hands work."
He climbed down the ladder before Tam could answer.
Tam lay under the blankets and listened to the farm. A cow lowed in the field, and hens muttered somewhere below. The water wheel creaked around and around.
He thought, Skills.
They appeared in front of him at once, laid out just as they were in the game's side panel. Attack. Strength. Defence. Ranged. Prayer. Magic. Fishing. Cooking. Mining. Smithing. And all the rest, twenty-four skills in all, in their columns.
Every one of them said 1, except Hitpoints.
Hitpoints said 10, and all ten were back. His combat level, the one number that summed up how dangerous you were in a fight, said 3. In the game, that was the number you had in your first five minutes, before you'd killed anything at all.
Back home, his account had been maxed: every skill at 99, the top level. It had taken him years. It was a hardcore ironman, a kind of account that lost its special title forever if it died even once. It sat in the top hundred on the game's public scoreboard. Careful planning had been his whole brand. In six years, it had never died. Chat used to bet on it.
He had known thousands of usernames, and hardly anyone's face. His mum used to ring every Sunday. Most Sundays he'd been live, so he'd let it go to voicemail. He'd told himself he'd call her back.
He looked at the wooden sword on the floor. TAM, it said, cut deep and careful and a bit wonky.
His account was still hardcore. He wasn't.